This edited volume contains eight distinct chapters on youth languages, language practices, and language contact in Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and South Africa. The central objective of this volume is to foreground the numerous ways in which urban environments are characterized not only by linguistic diversity—driven by economic factors that increase relocation and also by the fact that fifty percent of the population is under the age of nineteen—but also by the exciting, novel ways in which speakers of urban linguistic varieties distinguish themselves from speakers of other linguistic varieties, a point illustrated most clearly in the first chapter: ‘cities not only serve as confluences of language contact… but they also provide spaces for the kind of linguistic creativity that thrives on linguistic heterogeneity’ (13). To this end, the introduction contextualizes the volume by providing sociological background information before offering four distinctive characteristics of ‘urban speech’ that frame the discussions in the other chapters.
Chapter 1 (by Silverster Ron Simango) presents a descriptive account of naturally occurring youth language in South Africa, the data for which arrive from interviews with speakers of Tsotsitaal, which the author states is (often) perceptually associated with criminal activity. Two models are offered to explain the data under consideration, and four traits of youth languages are presented. Chapter 2 (by Tessa Dowling) investigates how the form of Xhosa spoken by the youth incorporates significant English codeswitching, relying on observations of university students and comparing data collected from Xhosa radio stations. Evidence is presented for exciting lexical innovations and grammaticalization. Chapter 3 (by Heather Brookes) offers a longitudinal study of naturally occurring, recorded conversations among three generations of young men over a period of twenty-two years in Johannesburg. The author notes that lexicon alone cannot account for Tsotsitaal, as linguistic choices are often performative and may draw upon generations-old slang. Chapter 4 (by Rajend Mesthrie) considers the scholarship on the ‘tsotsitaal’ as a concept and notes that they range from ‘social and linguistic continua from “deep” varieties associated with the underworld and prisons to “light” varieties associated with male teenage and post-teenage use’ (95). Chapter 5 (by Roland Kießling) investigates how Camfranglais is growing in popularity among musicians due to an expansive lexicon representing semantic domains of interest to younger generations. The author argues that Camfranglais is neither a pidgin or creole nor a dialect but, rather, something else entirely. Chapter 6 (by Maarten Mous & Sandra Barasa) focuses on a descriptive account of the domains of usage and social functions of Sheng by relying upon data from stand-up comedies, TV shows, call-in radio shows, YouTube videos, billboards, and so on, and distinguishes among Deep Sheng, Light Sheng, and Engsh. Chapter 7 (by Akissi Béatrice Boutin) examines the development of Ivorian French as a symbol of national identity during ‘difficult socioeconomic circumstances [by those] who were rebelling against society’ in the 1970s (160). A comprehensive account of its verbal morphology and a comparative phonological account of Nouchi and Ivorian French is offered. Chapter 8 (Ellen Hurst-Harosh & Eyo Offiong Mensah) revisits more general methods for studying youth languages and considers questions of both authenticity and the naturalness of data collected as representative of a stylect as opposed to a fully-fledged language.
